


The End is Where We Begin (Again)

by Adina



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack tries to change Torchwood--and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End is Where We Begin (Again)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to <http://adina-atl.livejournal.com/130049.html> on July 24, 2008.

Mourning was something Jack was good at--or at least practiced at. He moved the bodies of his latest colleagues to the morgue, cleaned up blood and fallen papers, checked the CCTV footage and the Rift monitor. Sat down at his workstation to file a report--

Stopped.

Torchwood Cardiff. He was the only one left. 

"I alone escaped to tell thee," he said aloud, the words echoing through the empty Hub. He checked the time--1:37AM. Even Torchwood celebrated holidays, or at least valued an excuse to get drunk, so no one would expect contact for--he calculated in his head, balancing what he knew of people and hangovers and sleep schedules--for at least 31 hours. He could probably even stretch it until Monday morning, though he'd have to have a damn good story for that.

No. The CCTV footage showed him, showed Alex; it recorded Alex giving him Torchwood Three, a promotion after a mere century of service. It was too valuable to risk tampering with. Torchwood Three was casual, sloppy even at times, and that had given Jack wiggle room to follow his own agenda. Torchwood London had no tolerance for slop, no trust for an immortal semi-alien known to be searching for Torchwood's greatest enemy. They would take Torchwood Three from him if they could.

Moving carefully, covering his tracks, he changed passwords and security overrides, rewrote protocols, installed a deadman program that would make the Hub systems more and more intractable without his "local knowledge" before they failed utterly after three days without his login.

Reviewing the CCTV footage, he saw himself leave at seven, saw Lisa, Griff, and John arrive at nine. He removed the footage of Alex doing paperwork from 7:48 to 8:29, expertly splicing in footage of Alex doing paperwork from three days ago. It wasn't perfect, but he didn't want it to be--London had to find the edit, had to assume that Alex was hiding something more sinister than paperwork in those forty-one missing minutes. Finally he turned off the cameras in the vaults and deleted all footage from 7:52 onwards. There was work to do and Alex would have to take the blame.

Drawing his sidearm for the cameras, he stood and headed for the vaults. As soon as he was out of range of live cameras, he holstered it again, continuing down to the cells. Skipping the weevil moaning in the corner of the first cell, he opened the next one. The blowfish he had caught the week before, now sober and scared, looked up warily.

"Come on," Jack said. "Stick with me; I'm getting you out of here." He would never turn over another alien for Torchwood's experiments, not if he could help it. The blowfish only stared. "I don't have time for this!" he shouted. "Come on." The blowfish moved for the cell door. "Good fellow. Don't run, you'll only get lost." He skipped two cells, stopped at Jill, their latest Rift victim. "Come on, sweetheart. Up and at 'em." Jill didn't even look up, not that he expected it, rocking back and forth on the floor crooning nursery rhymes to herself. With a warning glare at the blowfish, he entered her cell, picking her up and cradling her in his arms. 

The vaguely avian, feathered alien three cells down was next. He, she, or it didn't speak English, Welsh, Panpid, or any other language Jack had been able to identify, but it had learned a sullen obedience to gesture from Griff. Jack beckoned it forward and it followed as he led his assorted troupe down long-forgotten (by anyone but Jack) tunnels. At a certain door he stopped, turning to the blowfish. "Listen. I'm letting you go, but keep your goddamn head down. No booze, theft, or drugs. I catch you again, I shoot. We clear?" The blowfish nodded, his expression still dubious. Jack opened the door and stood aside. "Up the ramp two levels, get yourself hid by morning." The blowfish ran and Jack shooed the avianoid after him.

Up another tunnel was a grill in the floor. It was riskier, but he had to leave Jill someplace warm, somewhere she would be found quickly. He listened at the grill, but it was quiet. Lifting it free, he lowered Jill through, dropping her the last few feet before dropping down beside her. The rail platform was empty. He settled her in the corner next to an emergency door, letting her rock herself into stillness. Opening the alarmed door, he let it slam and sprinted back for the grill, leaping to catch the edge and hoisting himself in. He turned away as soon as he heard pounding feet.

Back in the vaults, he wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and took a spare handgun from the armoury, using it to shoot out the cameras. Going back to the cells, he went down the line methodically, shooting those too damaged to live, those too dangerous to release. Dropping the gun on the floor, he left.

He still had a report to send to Torchwood One.

***

4 January 2000

Suzie Costello sat back as Ms. Hartman stopped the CCTV playback. "Cold bastard," she said conversationally. "If we need a procedure guide for what to do when your entire team is killed, he could write one." Secure the base, gather up the bodies, investigate possible disturbance in cells, report to headquarters; all with no more than a stricken look when his boss's blood spattered on his face.

Ms. Hartman smiled, though it never reached her eyes. "Given that Mr. Harkness has apparently never read a procedure guide, he wouldn't be my first choice to write one. His actions in this case have been...exemplary. Unusually so. Alexander Hopkins, the previous head of Torchwood Three, formally recommended Mr. Harkness as his successor before killing his subordinates and blowing his own brains out."

"I wouldn't think a madman's opinion would be much of a recommendation," Suzie said. It was a risk, but only a small one. Ms. Hartman wouldn't have summoned her personally, wouldn't be speaking this freely if there weren't something big in the works, something that involved Suzie.

"Normally, no," Ms. Hartman said. "Unfortunately Mr. Hopkins gave Mr. Harkness the passwords and security overrides for the Torchwood Three base before he died. Via email of all things. Mr. Harkness is in possession of the base and its contents, and has been...resistant...to leaving to visit London. His array of excuses is inventive, even plausible, but it leaves us with an awkward situation."

Suzie let a small portion of her surprise show. "You sound like you doubt his loyalty." Loyalty was seldom an issue, at least not for very long. You were either loyal to Torchwood or you were gone.

Ms. Hartman gave another smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Mr. Harkness's loyalty isn't in question. He is intensely loyal--just not to this organization." She tossed a manila folder onto the conference table, letting it slide to a halt in front of Suzie. Suzie picked it up but kept her attention on Ms. Hartman. "Captain Jack Harkness. We're pretty sure that's not his real name, and no one knows when--or how many times--he earned the rank, but he likes to call himself that. Independent field agent since 1898." She held up a finger before Suzie could figure out how to ask her to repeat that. "That's _Eighteen_ Ninety-Eight, yes. He's served us in three centuries and two millennia. Took a leave of absence to serve as an Army officer in World War I and an RAF pilot in World War II." She sounded as if she rather approved of that last bit.

"Alien?" He wouldn't be the first alien they had used--or maybe he _had_ been the first--but it would explain Ms. Hartman's reluctance to trust him.

"Possibly. Mr. Harkness's records have been...edited...on more than one occasion according our analysts, as early as 1916 and as recently as Friday night. I have the analysts trying to recover the original data, but Mr. Harkness is well trained and thorough."

"I see." Suzie wasn't an assassin, she was a field agent, team leader, and researcher; Ms. Hartman wouldn't send Suzie to kill Harkness when she had men and women trained for the job. "I take it I'm being transferred to Cardiff, then. As Mr. Harkness's second in command? Or as his keeper?"

"Both, of course." 

***

14 July 2003

Jack tossed the folder he'd assembled onto the conference table in front of Suzie. "I want her," he said simply.

Suzie looked at him quizzically before picking up the folder. They both pretended that she was his subordinate, that he was in charge, and as long as he did exactly what London said she backed him up. But he had no illusions about who Wilson and David, the other two agents who followed her from Torchwood One, would support if it came to a conflict. Her eyebrow rose as she read before she looked up at him and asked, "Why?" It wasn't a denial--or rather it was--but incredulity warred with amusement. If he had suggested spandex uniforms her reaction might have been much the same.

He gave an easy smile with a hint of smirk to it. "She's brilliant, she built a working sonic modulator from flawed plans, and if UNIT's done their job right--" He let the smirk widen. "We can own her. Body and soul."

Suzie gave the folder a second look, a hint of reluctant admiration showing. "She betrayed the Ministry of Defence, stole secrets--"

He let his teeth show, knowing Suzie's weak spot. "Got away with it too, long enough to build and correct the plans. If UNIT hadn't been on to the 'terrorists' no one would have ever known the plans were gone. They had no idea who Sato was before they busted in on the handover." Suzie admired competence, cool nerve and intelligence, and Sato had that. "She didn't sell out for money but to save her mother. And if we control her mother, or just access to her mother--" He smirked again. "I like knowing what a person's price is, right up front." That was even true. He could deal with people willing to sell out crown and country (or species) for love; their perspective could be broadened as the Doctor broadened his, the horizons of their love expanded. The merely expedient were harder to crack, and there was no guarantee of putting the pieces back together again afterward. 

Suzie gave him a challenging look. "If she's that good, maybe she should go to London." She had to know what he was up to, if not the full scale of his plans. If she thought he was an empire builder, expanding his domain at the expense of Torchwood One, that was safe. London was never going to see four or five people rotting in the Welsh countryside as a threat. 

He shook his head, smiling gently. "Only if you want to start a pissing match between London and UNIT. UNIT owes me a favour or two, enough to give me Sato, at least." It never hurt to remind her that he had a power base outside of Torchwood. "If London asks, they'll decide they need her themselves. Of course Yvonne would probably win the match on points and style, but it would take months." He grinned at her again. "Months that Sato could spend rebuilding the Rift monitor like you keep asking Wilson to do. Months she could spend babysitting the Mainframe while you work on weapons tech." Months that she could spend rotting in a cell, losing her edge and maybe going psychotic. 

Suzie's look said she knew exactly what he was doing. But his empire was her empire as far as anyone in London knew, and she would get credit for the research Sato produced. "And you'll offer her...what?"

He had that figured, including what he was willing to bargain away to Suzie. "Five year contract, yearly visits with her family, monthly phone calls. Flat outside the Hub, usual monitoring."

"No visits," Suzie countered. "Monthly postcards, a phone call if she lasts two years. No field work."

He pretended to consider that. "Done."

She looked at him sceptically. "Once she's in, she's in for life. However long that turns out to be."

He let the corner of his mouth twitch up. Torchwood never let anyone go. "She doesn't need to know that."

***

21 December 2003

Jack stopped outside a restaurant in London, a very good Italian place he often visited when forced to Torchwood One's territory. Toshiko had been sitting silently beside him in the SUV since they left Cardiff, barely responding to questions, never initiating conversation. The last five months had been brutal, watching the life drain out of her, watching as she became quieter and shrank in on herself. She followed as he got out of the car, but he stopped her at the door to the restaurant. "Give me your headset," he ordered, keeping his voice gentle but firm.

She froze. The headset tracked her location as well as keeping her on-call 24/7, and Suzie had made it very clear her first day the penalty for being without it. Retcon and return to UNIT's tender loving care was the least of it. He held out his hand, raising his eyebrows at her to remind her that he was the boss. Hesitantly she disconnected it and handed it over. 

"Purse too." She handed that over with less hesitation but more confusion. "Any alien tech?" She shook her head no. His wrist strap scanned her clean of tech and tracking devices. Handing her a key card, he lifted his chin towards the hotel across the street. "Room 412. Don't talk to anyone before you get there. Meet me back here in one hour. Don't be late." She just looked at him and he smiled, knowing she wouldn't find his expression very reassuring. She had to learn to trust him. He jerked his head towards the hotel again and she turned to go.

"Oh. And Toshiko?" She turned back, suppressed terror in her eyes. "Good work."

One hour. One hour with her mother and Toshiko would be his. Not Suzie's, not Torchwood's. 

His.

***

15 January 2005

"We need a doctor we don't have to Retcon," Jack said as he and Suzie moved David's body to the morgue. "Someone who isn't going to spend precious time trying to find a terrestrial origin for gantril venom before treating it."

"There isn't a treatment for gantril venom," Suzie said, leaning back against the morgue drawers, her eyes cool and dry.

He closed the door on David's drawer, turned to lean back against the drawers himself. "Be nice if there was," he told the light fixture. "Be nice to have someone patch us up without asking awkward questions. Be nice to have someone who could figure out what makes an alien tick--and how to make it stop ticking." The hint of weapons, biological or chemical, would appeal to her.

She laughed, knowing exactly how he was trying to manipulate her. "And you have someone in mind, no doubt. Another of your feral kittens? What did this one do, steal the crown jewels?"

Chuckling, he shook his head. "No one in particular," he lied. "But if we keep our eyes open something will pop up." He considered and rejected as too obvious a salacious comment about things popping up. From Suzie's look she heard the comment without him saying it.

The woman he had in mind, a veterinarian experienced in patching up the damage aliens could do to livestock and pets, died before he could recruit her, killed when she tried to treat an injured alien that only looked like a pink poodle. Suzie got Liz, an experienced field agent from Aberdeen, as a replacement for David; Jack settled for Dr. Owen Harper, sarcastic and prickly but willing to go beyond reasonable measures to save someone he cared about.

***

15 July 2005

Jack reminded Suzie of her agreement to let Toshiko call her mother after two years, but only after warning Toshiko and her mother to be careful. 

It helped that Suzie didn't speak Japanese.

***

29 July 2005

"Oi!" Owen barked, storming into the conference room. "This Tommy Ballsless fellow--"

"Brockless," Jack corrected, keeping his good humour mostly because he knew it annoyed Owen.

"Yeah, him. What do you need him for?"

"No idea." He spread his hands to emphasize his ignorance and Owen's eyes narrowed in suspicion. He really didn't know, he'd been in France when Torchwood snatched Brockless, but it never hurt to let Owen think Jack knew more than he did. "Gerald and Harriet--Gerald Carter and Harriet Derbyshire, the agents in 1918--said we'd need him sometime in the future."

"Well, if you need him as something besides freezer-burned meat I'm going to have to do some work," Owen said with a scowl. "Heart's dodgy, muscle tone's shot, hematocrit's in the sub-basement--"

"So do some work," Suzie said with a grin. "You're capable of it, or so you keep telling us."

"Yeah, well--" Owen was almost shuffling his feet. Was he _embarrassed_? "He needs to get outside, get some fresh air, exercise. Sunshine if it ever stops raining in this bloody city."

"No way," Jack said automatically, half a beat ahead of Suzie's "Security--"

"Oh, right!" Owen burst out. "'Cause if he starts talking about World War bloody One we'll have to Retcon the natives instead of oh, telling them he's a nutter on day-release from Providence Park."

"He's got a point, Jack," Suzie said. "And it's not like anyone's going to recognize him."

The problem was the timeline when he was returned, not present-day security. But it wasn't like he was going to live long in 1918 anyway. "Okay, but don't let him wander off on his own."

Owen looked shifty, shoulders hunched slightly. "Actually, I figured Tosh could do it while I work up some meds for him, try to figure out what the hell they did to him in the fifties to leave him such a mess. Do her good to remember what the sun looks like for a change."

"You just don't want to practice your nonexistent bedside manner," Suzie scoffed. 

Owen shrugged, admitting to it far too easily. Apparently Tosh's interest in Tommy hadn't escaped him either.

"If she's not busy," Jack put in for the looks of it. 

"Tosh is always busy," Owen shot back over his shoulder as he left.

***

7 October 2005

When Wilson died in a mundane traffic accident, Jack selected his replacement carefully. Grayson was smart, dedicated, ambitious, and had been at Torchwood One a year longer than Suzie. After six months of butting heads with him over seniority, she didn't fight his request for a transfer back to London. It made sense, she agreed, to begin training Toshiko as a field agent.

***

3 June 2006

Suzie was sitting at her computer, obviously trying not to laugh, when Jack returned to the Hub. "Someone sending you dirty jokes again?" he asked.

"Not since the last time you did," she said, twisting around to look at him. "Liz is bitching in IM."

Liz was in London for briefings on the ghosts plaguing Great Britain. "Is she still claiming not to believe in ghosts? Because I think they've become pretty obvious, myself."

"They're not ghosts, they're unexplained phenomena," Tosh said from her workstation.

Suzie nodded towards Tosh. "What she said. But no, Liz's mad because her meeting's been postponed." Her expression dared him to ask why.

He smiled at her toothily. "I'll bite. Why has her meeting been postponed, Ms. Costello?" 

"Because Torchwood has a visitor." Suzie looked smug, triumphant. "The Doctor." She shook her head. "Biggest thing to happen in Torchwood history and Liz is whinging about the schedule."

Jack froze. "The Doctor? _The_ Doctor?"

"Queen Victoria's time-travelling alien meddler? Yes." She shook her head, possibly in admiration. "He parked his Partis in the middle of Torchwood Tower, then started poking around with one of his infamous companions. Security caught them, of course." 

"TARDIS," Jack corrected automatically. Torchwood had the Doctor. That wouldn't last long, of course, but if they could keep him for three hours, just three hours, Jack had a chance. If it was the right Doctor, of course. At least this time Jack knew Jack wasn't with him. "Is there a picture? Video?"

"Not yet," Tosh said. 

"Suzie, see about getting one," he ordered. "I'm going to London--whenever the Doctor shows up, disaster is never far behind." He waited to see whether Suzie would gainsay him, but she was already at work on the computer. Apparently he'd successfully expunged his interest in the Doctor from his record. "Owen--" He couldn't risk saying goodbye. "Never mind."

"I'll just stay here and wait for someone to start bleeding, shall I?"

"Send whatever CCTV images you can find to the SUV," he told Suzie. "Tosh, you're with me," he said on impulse, heading for the garage.

They were on the outskirts of Bristol before Tosh spoke. "Picture coming through from Suzie. The Doctor plus one companion, Rose Tyler." 

Jack's heart stuttered at Rose's name, but he swerved to get around a slow-moving lorry before looking over at the picture. The Doctor looked nothing like _his_ Doctor, and Rose--Rose had aged at least twenty years. He had imagined them the same, timeless while he took the slow road through history; he hadn't imagined time passing for them as well. They would remember him, wouldn't they? He remembered them--

Near Swindon Tosh gave a choking gasp. "Jack--something's happening--"

He looked at the screen long enough to see Daleks before pushing the accelerator to the floor.

***

11 June 2006

The pterodactyl was just ridiculous.

Jack might have believed the weevil: it wasn't hard to track weevils, even for a junior researcher with only two years experience and no backup, and it wouldn't be hard to wait until Jack had found it too before leaping in to help. But the pterodactyl--to believe that a pterodactyl had just happened to get stuck in a large, empty warehouse, where she just happened to be found by said junior researcher, who just happened to need Jack's help to capture her--no. The idea that Ianto Jones captured her, moved her to the warehouse, and then let her go was equally unbelievable, at least if he had done it alone.

Suzie, on the other hand, knew exactly what Jack liked, or thought she did. 

"What the hell is that?" she asked as he wheeled the still-unconscious pterodactyl into the Hub.

"It was a gift."

"From a secret admirer?" she asked, cautiously touching one wing and then pulling to spread it open, moving it up and down to view the web of skin from both sides.

"An admirer with excellent taste in extinct winged dinosaurs," he said. Her curiosity was masterfully done: he might have believed it if he hadn't known better.

"It's a pterodactyl," she said with evident delight. Looking sideways at him, she added, "Which is technically not a dinosaur, not that I suppose you care." She examined its beak. "Came through the Rift? How'd you catch it?" She'd always been good at games, even if neither of them admitted to playing. 

"Told you. It was a gift. From an admirer." He shouldn't be enjoying this nearly so much.

Suzie rolled her eyes. "Did you Retcon him before or after you shagged him?" Which was a mistake, admitting she knew Ianto's sex, but he wouldn't count it against her.

"Neither. He starts work tomorrow as our new tea-boy." It was safer to take Suzie's Torchwood One minion now, before their machinations got someone killed, but he could at least minimize Ianto's role. Let Suzie's boy do the scutwork--Tosh had done it too long.

"Jack--" It was half exasperation, half amusement. "You are joking, right? Because Torchwood doesn't do tea-boys." She held up a hand, "Don't say it. Yes, I know, you do anyone. Seriously?"

Jack shrugged, pretended that he believed everything Ianto had been feeding him. "He was Torchwood One. Junior Researcher. Bloody persistent. And--" He smirked.

"And?"

"He looks good in a suit."

***

27 July 2006

The morning after Suzie's death Jack called Tosh into his office. He was perched on the edge of his desk closest to the door when she came in, swinging his right leg in apparent idle thought. She smiled at him, curious but with no sign of apprehension at the summons. He hid his satisfaction at that--Tosh was a lousy liar; if she looked confident she was confident.

"Give me your headset," he ordered, keeping a bland but pleasant expression on his face. Her joyful smile was almost reflexive--he watched it blossom (she was so beautiful when she was happy) and then dissolve into confusion as she realized that the Hub was a highly unlikely place for him to have set up a meeting with her mother. He let some of his amusement show, but only held out his hand. She dropped the headset into his hand obediently and he let it fall to the floor, bringing his heel down on it. Standing up, he brought his full weight to bear, twisting until the case cracked, shattered, until the tracking device inside was reduced to a tangle of wires and broken chips.

"Your headset appears to be damaged," he said, not even trying to hide his grin anymore. "You should draw a new one from stores." A new one, pulled at random from a stack of identical boxes, untouched by anyone but herself.

"I see." She looked up from the wreckage on the floor and met his eyes. "Shall I get one for PC Cooper as well whilst I'm down there?"

"That would save Ianto a step," he agreed. "Take the rest of the morning off. I'm sure you have things to do at home." No. No ambiguity, not anymore. "Sweep your flat for bugs, get a land-line installed, call your mother," he ordered, knowing he sounded a little harsh.

"Jack?"

"It's over," he said. "Finished." They weren't dancing to Torchwood One's tune any more.

***

29 July 2006

"Tell me what it means to be human in the 21st century."

He'd been angry when he said that, but Gwen took it at face value, showing him and the rest what a normal human life looked like, untainted by Torchwood and its paranoia. He needed that, would have to preserve it.

***

15 August 2006

Jack had expected Gwen. He should have expected Tosh, but hadn't.

"May I come in?" she asked from the door of his office. He waved her to a chair but she only stood next to it, fingers curled against its back, watching him. He stayed silent; rushing Tosh was seldom helpful.

"Was what he did any worse than what I did?" she asked, her voice soft, her fingers denting the chair's padded back.

"You didn't get two people killed," he pointed out, wondering how far she was going to go with this. In four years she had never brought up her crime, though it had been thrown in her face often enough her first years by her so-called colleagues. "You never hid a cyber-conversion chamber in the basement."

She dropped her eyes. "Even--" She met his eyes for a moment before looking away again. "Even when they had my mother I never thought they wanted the sonic modulator for--" She gave a vague wave of her hand, smiled unconvincingly, "--movie sound effects."

"Gwen got here first, told me I couldn't Retcon him." _For godsake, Jack. Memories are what make us human. If you take that away from him you might as well kill him!_

"Might be a kindness," she said with an odd mix of compassion and pragmatism.

Jack would shoot Ianto before stealing four years of his life, Gwen was right about that. "Does he deserve that?" he asked, leaning back in his chair. "Kindness?"

"It hurts even to look at him," Tosh said, her voice almost as ragged as it had been in UNIT's detention facility. "I know that kind of pain, I know how--He was trapped, he is trapped--" She drew a shuddering breath. "Jack. Please." The last two words were even. Strong.

"You want me to save him?" he asked, keeping his voice casual.

"Yes." She lifted her chin in a rare show of stubbornness.

He smiled. "Okay then." He almost laughed at her expression. "I already sent him home. Four weeks suspension. I'll--" He shook his head, remembering the wreckage in the Hub, human and otherwise. "I don't know how I'm going to put him back together again, but I'll try."

She released the back of the chair. "Thank you."

"I had my gun aimed at his head twice today," he said before she could turn to leave. "I could have shot him." He leaned forward in his chair. "I wanted to pull the trigger. Do you know why I didn't?"

She shook her head, suddenly looking uncertain.

"Because a hundred years of Torchwood tradition says I should have." 

She smiled at that, walking around his desk and leaning over to kiss his cheek. "Thank you," she repeated.

"Hey, if you want to thank me you have to give me a better kiss than that!" She fled, laughing.

Owen was leaning against the wall when Jack emerged from his office a few minutes later.

"For or against?" Jack asked, settling his coat around his shoulders.

"I'd say shoot the son of a bitch except then I'd have to clean up my own bodies again," Owen said without heat. He threw something at Jack, hard, aiming for his head. Jack fielded a bottle of pills before it connected. "He'll be less of a wanker if he gets some actual sleep tonight. Don't leave the bottle lying about unless you mean it."

***

12 September 2006

Jack was in the conference room with Gwen when the cog door rolled back. Ianto walked in, looking pale and shocky, but there, able to face his nightmares. Tosh was right: it hurt to look at him, not because Jack had been in his position (though he had) but because he was Jack's failure. He had thought Ianto was Suzie's creature, her minion, so he abandoned him, ignored him except when Jack needed him as toy or as tool. Ianto said he hadn't been, that Suzie had ignored him as much as Jack had, and Jack believed it, now. It had left him alone, a pawn without a player in Jack and Suzie's game.

The Doctor would have been ashamed of Jack.

"Will he be all right?" Gwen asked, her voice low despite the soundproof glass between them and him.

She wasn't asking if he was safe, if he was loyal. Not whether he was a security threat, whether they could trust him. Not whether he could still be useful, whether Jack could break him to his service. But whether he would be all right, whether he would heal. 

"I hope so," he said.

Ianto was battered and broken, thought himself empty of meaning and of purpose, but he was still a better man than Jack had been when the Doctor found him, more human than the shell a hundred years of Torchwood left him. Jack had spent as much time as he could with Ianto this past month, ruthlessly stealing time from saving the world to save one man.

Like Rose would have done.

Ianto lifted his head to meet Jack's gaze and Jack nodded, confirming--confirming Ianto's right to be there, his right to exist and to be seen.

The twenty-first century was when it all changed, and Jack finally had his team. Now he just had to make sure they were ready.


End file.
